ApplixWare has an
ODBC database interface supported on
at least some platforms. ApplixWare 4.4.2 has been demonstrated under
Linux with Postgres 7.0 using
the psqlODBC driver contained in
the Postgres distribution.

ApplixWare must be
configured correctly in order for it to be able to access the
PostgresODBC software drivers.

Enabling ApplixWare Database Access

These instructions are for the 4.4.2 release of ApplixWare on Linux. Refer to the Linux Sys Admin on-line book for more
detailed information.

You must modify axnet.cnf so
that elfodbc can find
libodbc.so (the ODBC driver manager) shared library.
This library is included with the ApplixWare
distribution, but axnet.cnf
needs to be modified to point to the correct
location.

As root, edit the file applixroot/applix/axdata/axnet.cnf.

At the bottom of axnet.cnf, find the line that starts
with

#libFor elfodbc /ax/...

Change line to read

libFor elfodbc applixroot/applix/axdata/axshlib/lib

which will tell elfodbc to look in this directory for the
ODBC support library. Typically
Applix is installed in
/opt so the full path would
be /opt/applix/axdata/axshlib/lib, but
if you have installed Applix somewhere else then
change the path accordingly.

Create .odbc.ini as
described above. You may also want to add the flag

TextAsLongVarchar=0

to the database-specific portion of
.odbc.ini so that text fields will not be shown as
**BLOB**.

Testing ApplixWare ODBC Connections

Bring up Applix
Data

Select the Postgres
database of interest.

Select Query->Choose
Server.

Select ODBC, and
click Browse. The database you
configured in .odbc.ini
should be shown. Make sure that the Host: field is empty (if it is not,
axnet will try to contact axnet on another machine to
look for the database).

Select the database in the box that was launched
by Browse, then click
OK.

Enter username and password in the login
identification dialog, and click OK.

You should see "Starting elfodbc
server" in the lower left corner of the data window.
If you get an error dialog box, see the debugging section
below.

The 'Ready' message will appear in the lower left
corner of the data window. This indicates that you can
now enter queries.

Select a table from Query->Choose tables, and then
select Query->Query to access the database. The first
50 or so rows from the table should appear.

The driver process has terminated due to some other
problem. You might not have an up-to-date version of the
PostgresODBC package.

setuid to 256: failed to launch gateway

The September release of ApplixWare v4.4.1 (the first
release with official ODBC
support under Linux) shows problems when usernames exceed
eight (8) characters in length. Problem description
ontributed by Steve Campbell (<scampbell@lear.com>).

The axnet program's
security system seems a little suspect. axnet does things on behalf of the user
and on a true multiple user system it really should be run with
root security (so it can read/write in each user's directory).
I would hesitate to recommend this, however, since we have no
idea what security holes this creates.

In order to go through the ApplixWare
Data Tutorial, you need to create the sample tables that
the Tutorial refers to. The ELF Macro used to create the tables
tries to use a NULL condition on many of the database columns,
and Postgres does not
currently allow this option.

To get around this problem, you can do the following:

Modifying the ApplixWare Demo

Copy /opt/applix/axdata/eng/Demos/sqldemo.am
to a local directory.

Edit this local copy of sqldemo.am:

Search for 'null_clause = "NULL"

Change this to null_clause = ""

Start Applix Macro
Editor.

Open the sqldemo.am file from the Macro Editor.

Select File->Compile and
Save.

Exit Macro
Editor.

Start Applix
Data.

Select *->Run Macro

Enter the value "sqldemo",
then click OK.

You should see the progress in the status line of the
data window (in the lower left corner).